Campus Life

On-Campus Creativity

For Saint Mary’s students, there’s no shortage of cultural exposure. Not only are we located in a culture-rich city filled with music, galleries, and theatre, we also added our own on-campus gallery in 1971. The gallery, which was built to National Gallery of Canada Standards, was the first purpose-built university art gallery in Halifax.

As you explore the gallery, you’ll notice that it focuses on contemporary art, and features both emerging and established artists. We maintain a constant rotation of new work by showing between ten and twelve exhibitions every year.

Information on our exhibits is easily accessible, since we produce publications for most exhibitions. We also frequently host panels, lectures, and artists' presentations.

We’re also home to one of the finest pianos in the region. This gives us the flexibility to offer performances, concerts, and readings.

Visit the Art Gallery on the first floor of the Loyola Building.

Our collection

We have over 2000 works in our permanent collection, which focuses on contemporary Canadian artists. Some of our most notable pieces are works by Nelly Beveridge Gray. We’re proud to feature her watercolours and rubbings of historic reliefs in Mesoamerica, Europe, and Asia.

Many works from our collection are displayed throughout the campus, including commissioned works by John Greer and Mathew Reichertz. We also show works by a variety of artists associated with the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD), including Gerald Ferguson, Mitchell Wiebe, and Lucy Pullen.